Effective protection for fishing rods and reels is desirable because the rods and reels can be expensive (e.g., better fly rods can cost in excess of $800.00), and transporting uncased rods and reels between home and a fishing location can too often result in bringing them into contact with structures (e.g., closing car doors or other items being conveyed) in a manner that can break or mar the rods and/or reels.
Thus, the art is replete with structures for protective containers for fishing rods with reels mounted on handle portions of the rods, including such containers for fly rods having the reels mounted on ends of handle portions of the rods. U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,408,564; 6,343,728; 5,619,819; 5,341,590; 5,319,874; 5,046,279; 4,967,504; and 4,171,588 provide illustrative examples.
For several years a protective container for a fly rod with a reel mounted on an end of a handle portion of the rod has been commercially available from 3M Company, St. Paul, Minn., under the trade designation “DB DUN by Scientific Anglers”. That protective container includes a rigid elongate tube having an inner surface defining a cavity adapted to receive a fishing rod; and a flexible housing attached to the tube adjacent one end that is adapted to enclose the reel and the end part of a handle portion of the rod on which the reel is mounted. That housing includes opposite wall portions having side wall parts each adapted to lie along and across a different side of the reel and handle portion of the rod, and peripheral parts extending toward each other from peripheries of the side wall parts so that opposed inner surfaces of the wall portions define a cavity that can receive the reel and the handle portion of the rod on which it is mounted. The housing includes a zipper for releasably attaching together distal edges of the peripheral parts so that with the zipper open the wall portions can be separated to allow the rod and reel to be placed in or removed from the housing, and when closed the zipper retains the wall portions in their protective positions around the reel and handle portion. The wall portions in that protective housing are formed from inner and outer layers of heavy woven nylon fabric sewn together around layers of foam padding. While the protection provided by that protective container for a fly rod with a reel mounted on it is quite good, efforts are ongoing to provide them with even better protection.